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Antarctic Undersea ROV

I am absolutely amazed at the quality of photos that your equipment is able to take.  A couple of questions for you:

1.  Are the cameras underwater 24-7 or are you just doing scheduled dives?  I'm just curious as the behavior of the animals over time.

2.  In your description on the expedition main page it said that you were going to be looking for previous experiments done underwater around McMurdo.  Have you found any?

Again, your pictures are amazing!  I am thoroughly enjoying reading your journals and am getting quite excited to head down there in about a month or so.

3.  When do you return from the ice?  Any chance we'll be down there at the same time?  This is actually a very good question since I haven't found out my exact deployment date yet.  Logistics call today so I will hopefully have more information this afternoon!

Cheers!
~Brandon

Thu, 10/18/2007 - 20:20

Mindy Bell

Hi Brandon,1. The underwater photos taken with the VideoRay are taken with a high-quality low-light color video camera and the VideoRay has a PC Pilot kit with USB video capture and dvd authoring software.
We are only doing several hour long deployments so far, and not every day, but the goal could be 24-hour monitoring at some point. There are VideoRays in commercial use that are underwater pretty continuously.
2. We have located some of Paul Dayton's cages from the 1960's at the jetty site that aren't in deep water, and we just moved a dive hut today to Dayton's wall - where some deep cages are that we haven't located yet.  I'll keep you posted when we get SCINI or VideoRay in deeper water!
3. I am scheduled to leave on Nov. 16th and Ann is next in on the 15th - I hope we get a few hours together before we fall asleep! I think you guys sent me down here early so I could be the cold-weather guinea-pig! It is awesome and you will love it!